That had been her assessment of him fifteen years ago but like their bodies had changed, she’s assumed his nature had. Success, adulation on a grand scale, money, those were forces that not only enabled change, they inspired it.
She wasn’t the carefree hedonist, game for anything anymore. She was more like her cautious, hardworking mother than she’d ever thought possible when she was dressing in fake leather and lace, so why would he still be the outwardly cocky, considerate sweetheart he’d once been.
“Who told you that? Officially the press pack refers to me as a larrikin for Australian audiences and a maverick for the rest of the world. If it gets around that I’m a hefting great big marshmallow, it’ll be bad for my image and imagine how many crap investments I’ll make then.”
“I’ll save you from crap investments.”
One minute she was standing pressed against him, ready for a kiss, the next he’d turned the grill off, rinsed off their plates, loaded the dishwasher and picked her up. “My hero,” he said.
“You’re not going to carry me up the stairs, are you?”
“That is where the bed is.” He winced. “Bad idea?”
“Narrow staircase. Needs replacing.”
“Honey, I haven’t met a tight spot I couldn’t worm my way out of yet.” If he tripped it was going to hurt, if he dropped her, she could break a limb. “Do you trust me?”
Tonight, she trusted him. On the stairs, in her bed, in her arms. Tomorrow was another story.
He took the creaky stairs at a steady pace, keeping her tucked tight against him, watching that he didn’t catch her feet on the banister. Halfway up on the little landing she relaxed, lowering her head to his shoulder and he squeezed her tighter. “You didn’t trust me.”
Her answer was cut off by her shriek as he took the next set of stairs at a gallop, bursting into the bedroom and tossing her on the bed. He came down after her, holding himself above her in a press-up, pelvis and stomach grazing hers, nose to nose.
He said, “I wouldn’t trust me either,” before he kissed her, dropped to her side and rolled them into a spoon, his knees behind hers, his big hand cupping her hip, thumb almost against her tattoo.
“Goodnight, Mena.”
“You’ll stay?” She didn’t want to wake and find him gone. She wasn’t ready to lose him now she’d found him again.
He nuzzled the back of her neck. “I got you.”
He had her, conflicted heart and liar’s soul.
She didn’t close her eyes until his steady breathing, the heaviness of his arm, told her he was asleep. She should be too, but on the other side of unconsciousness was everything she’d parked for passion. They’d have to talk. She’d have to make it clear this was a one-off thing. Something that shouldn’t have happened, no matter how good they’d made each other feel. Something that had to remain unspoken.
In another week or two his strategy would be written. Its execution was in the hands of other experts. She wouldn’t need to see him again, could monitor the strategy and communicate online and then Caroline would come back to work and take over.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. It was that she didn’t truly know him. She knew his bank balance and his address. She knew he liked to bang things. Drums, water, women. He was talented at all that. Yes, he was cocky and yes, he was kind, and he was the singularly best sexual experience of her life—again, but none of those things made a whole person and she wasn’t naive enough to think she had a clear head about him.
Snuggled next to him, breaking every professional boundary, she obviously didn’t. And when she woke, the heart-shaped rose-colored glasses of a groupie who was desperately trying to recapture her youth had to come off, just like the makeup on her hip.
In the daylight, they had to deal with the consequences of countless orgasms and sleeping in each other’s arms.
And the fact that she’d grown out of rock stars.
In the daylight, she was a coward.
She left him sleeping. She left a note on how he should lock up
and where to leave the spare key next to the coffee plunger he only had to add hot water to.
As if hot water was all it was going to take to wash this sin away.
TWELVE
“Grip, did you hear anything I said?”
Grip looked across at Abel. This meeting had been going on and on and he was hungry and tempted to simply repeat what Abel had just asked like he was twelve because he had no idea what was going on. He also badly wanted to look at his phone, because that note from Mena about locking up was cold, man.